


The Awakening of Stones

by Dargelos (Dargie)



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-11
Updated: 2010-01-11
Packaged: 2017-10-06 04:10:19
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/49570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dargie/pseuds/Dargelos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Walter Skinner attracts a succubus with an inside track to all his secrets.  He is rescued by friends.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Awakening of Stones

And you wait, await the one thing  
that will infinitely increase your life;  
the gigantic, the stupendous,  
the awakening of stones,  
depths turned round toward you. ~~ Rainer Maria Rilke

 

Leaning up against his car, watching Mulder and Scully watch each other made Skinner feel unaccountably lonely, though he suspected that neither of them understood how very much a part of each other they were. Not that he would ever tell them; that would go somewhat beyond the bounds of his job.   
But what was it? A way of looking at each other with the most perfect trust he'd ever seen? The fact that they didn't touch but always seemed connected? Skinner sighed. These two didn't realize they loved each other; they certainly didn't recognize how rare their relationship really was. It made him smile. Despite the soft melancholy and the damp spring night, it did make him smile.

"What's so funny?"

Skinner wanted to say "Your face," because Mulder's face was funny. But that went beyond the bounds, too - his own if not Mulder's - so he settled for, "I was just thinking of something someone told me today; not about anyone you know."

Mulder nodded. Scully fixed Skinner with that intense, blue-gray gaze of hers; sometimes it felt like having the outer layers of your soul stripped off when she looked you in the eye. "We don't often see you smile like that," she said and smiled back at him, the expression transforming her from serious and stern to open and playful. How the hell did she manage that sort of metamorphosis? Had it not been against every tenet of authority he believed in, he might have allowed himself to fall in love with her. Then he reflected that it was almost certainly a fait accompli, and stored that bit of self-knowledge away to consider in about thirty years when his world was smaller and safer, and probably emptier.

"None of us have reason to very often, do we?" he countered, feeling sad again. The last thing on earth he wanted was to see these two end up like him. Nothing he could do about it, though; the damage was being done systematically and with their consent.

"No," she agreed.

Mulder smiled in his turn and said, "We need to make reasons."

Scully, ever the sensible one, snapped the almost dreamlike mood by rapping Mulder's chest with the back of her hand. "You're such a romantic, Mulder. And I'm exhausted. Good night."

"Good night, Scully."

"Wait up, Scully, you can drop me at home. G'night!" Thrown over Mulder's shoulder the farewell drifted off on the spring wind.   
"'night, Mulder." Skinner watched them go, then turned and was about to put his key in the lock when some movement caught his attention. His head jerked to the right and he met the level, curious gaze of a young woman. He blinked. She did not look away, did not smile, did nothing but stare until Skinner began to feel the tiny hairs on his arms prickle.

"Hello?"

Her head tipped to the side as she regarded him like a curious cat. Dressed in bright layers of clothing against the chill, and with a thick mane of dark curls, the girl looked like a lovely gypsy. Like a girl he remembered with regret.

"Hello?" he repeated.

She began to grin. "Full moon tonight," she said.

He looked up. Full moon it was, fecund with dreams, and so luminous you could read by its light.

When he looked back, she was gone.

 

The rain was pouring down in sheets when he awoke the next morning. He'd entertained some idea of going in to work in the afternoon, but the weather was bad enough to make him roll over and pull the duvet up under his chin. Too chilly, too wet. They didn't need all of his days off after all. Not really.

By the time he finally rolled out of bed and made a pot of coffee, the rain had let up somewhat. He showered, and went to retrieve his newspaper from the porch, but when he opened his door, he spotted the girl, the one from the night before, sitting on the hood of a car in front of the house. Her face was tipped up to catch the rain and she looked startlingly alluring with wet ringlets framing an angular face, wet clothing clinging to her slender form. Regretfully he realized that if he were any other sort of man he might have smiled and invited her in for some impromptu amusement.

She leveled her gaze on him as she'd done the night before. Then she waved at him and every instinct went into high gear.

"You!" he said, his voice more firm than he felt.

She vanished. Disappeared in the most clichéd manner possible: just like that, right into thin air, without a trace. Bottom line: Gone.

The coffee didn't help very much, nor did the familiar presence of his gun on the table beside him. He still had a bad case of the shivers, and a sense that something more ominous than a goose had just danced across his grave. He thought about calling Mulder or Scully - this was their area of expertise after all - but Mulder would ask a thousand questions and repeat some bizarre account of hauntings among middle-aged men by nubile young female ghosts - where the hell did he get some of his information? Then Scully would cut right through it and ask if he'd been laid recently. Not that she'd be so blunt, but the question would hang between them until he managed either to lie or to change the subject.

Not in recent memory, Scully. Have you?

The phone rang and he jumped, knocking his spotted cow mug onto the floor. The mug remained intact, but the coffee left at the bottom spread itself over the widest possible area of his linoleum.

He took a deep, calming breath. "Skinner."

"Do you want to go to the movies?" Mulder. Did he have some sixth sense about co-workers who were loosing their grip over coffee?

"Uh…movies? What's playing?"

"A revival of The Haunting."

Skinner started to laugh. "Yes, okay," he managed. "What time?"

"Five-thirty show or eight?"

"Five-thirty." He had to get out of the house.

"I'll pick you up."

'Fine." Bring some ghost repellent, will you?

 

"You look awful; why did you come out?"

"What?"

"Come out. Why did you come out? You never do, and you don't look like you feel like it tonight.."

"Then why did you ask?"

"Juvenile evasion. You first."

Skinner gave it some thought and opted for the easiest answer. "I've been working too hard lately."

"Just lately?"

Skinner smiled. "Point taken. I think I need to get out on a date once in a while."

"I just think you ought to know I don't kiss on the first date," Mulder replied, deadpan, and Skinner found himself choking on a bubble of laughter.

"That's not exactly what I meant," he managed. "But thank you for warning me."

"There, that's better," Mulder replied, smiling one of those slow, Mulder smiles. "You were looking tense. Something wrong?"

Skinner sobered, chewed his lip for a bit, then said, "I may be having hallucinations."

The younger man nodded. "What have you been seeing?"

So, it was going to be easier than he'd feared.; another reason to like Mulder. "A girl."

"Pretty?"

"Very."

Mulder chuckled. "I don't think you have a problem."

She vanishes into thin air.

"In that case, you may have a problem. Tell me the rest."

Skinner slouched down in his seat and began to tell Mulder everything. He finished just as they pulled into the theater parking lot. "Not that much to tell," he admitted. "But unnerving. If she wasn't disappearing I'd say that I had a very real problem with security."

"Or a groupie. I wouldn't rule that out entirely."

"Mulder, they don't just vanish, and anyway, what would some lovely young thing want with a balding, middle-aged man like me?"  
Mulder leered.

Skinner gave a self-deprecating snort of laughter. "Not likely."

"You don't hear the chatter in the secretarial pool, do you? You sure you want a horror film?"

"Best thing in the world. Hair of the dog… Secretarial pool?"

"You're a brave man, Walter Skinner. This is some scary film."

"Oh? How much scarier than real life can it be?"

 

Lots. Lots scarier. "Mulder, do you watch things like this for fun?" Skinner asked as they left the theater. He felt a few residual goose bumps twitching up and down his forearms.

"Takes my mind off of work," the younger man said dryly. "Let's have some dinner; I'm starved."

"Do you think I'm crazy?" Skinner asked him as they walked across the dark lot towards the car.

"Not a bit. I believe you implicitly."

"Why? I mean why do you believe so easily?" he asked, needing to know what sort of philosophy fueled Mulder's faith that the world wasn't nearly so neat and rational as people liked to believe.

"It doesn't get much easier than seeing your pretty little visitor sitting on the roof of my car." He pointed and Skinner's head snapped up. "That is your wild girl, isn't it?"

There she was in her rainbow gear, a pair of light-up sunglasses flashing cheerfully pink and purple in the darkness.

"Damn, why don't I ever get visited by spirits who look like that?"  
"Young lady, get off that car!" Skinner shouted.

She vanished with an audible pop.

"Well, now we know why they made you A. D.; I'm impressed, we'll have to take you along on the next exorcism."

"Mulder, this is crazy."

Mulder nodded. "It's strange. I've seen stranger," he admitted and Skinner knew he wasn't joking. "But, at least I've seen her, too, so we can rule out hallucination or sexual fantasy…unless I'm having the same one which I think is unlikely…attractive as she may be. Has she spoken to you?"

"She pointed out the full moon last night."

"Last night's moon wasn't full." Mulder pointed skywards and Skinner was startled to see the waxing moon still looking like a fingernail. "It'll be a week or so before it's full."

"It was full last night when she pointed to it," Skinner insisted. "I think I've just lost my appetite."

"Never lose your appetite," Mulder advised, pushing Skinner towards the car. "I'm going to buy you dinner. It's my theory that if you eat enough chili you'll see a whole circus-load of strange things; she'll get lost in the crowd."

"Chili? I can't eat chili…."

But Mulder wasn't listening.

In the end, and despite his better judgment, Skinner polished off two large bowls of chili con carne with raw onions and cheese. He knew he was going to regret it.

"You want another beer?"

"Don't you think I've had enough?"

"No, this is all part of the Fox Mulder cure for hauntings. Chili, beer, a couple of jokes…we have a belching contest in the car…you're laughing again and I'm serious. Honestly, being haunted isn't quite as bad if you're a little drunk" He waved a beer bottle at the waitress and held up one finger, then burped softly and Skinner buried his face in his hands and sobbed with laughter. It was all completely sophomoric, and exactly what he needed at that moment.

"You're a good friend, Mulder," he said as he wiped the tears from his face. He didn't remember an evening when he'd laughed harder. The beer arrived and he resigned himself to getting directly to the thin, sharp edge of Impaired.

"Enlightened self-interest. Who else would let us go on chasing spooks?"

Briefly Skinner wondered if that were true, but pushed the thought out of his mind. If it was, he didn't want to know. The notion sobered him though, and about halfway through his bottle of beer he checked his watch. "I think we should be going. Uhn, I'm going to regret this meal."

"You might want to take some time off."

"I don't plan on regretting it that much," he said, being deliberately obtuse. Or maybe it was the beer making him genuinely obtuse. He was no longer quite certain, which made him unaccountably happy.

Mulder shrugged. It couldn't hurt. You do work too hard. Think about it."

"I'll take it under consideration."

On the way home they had a belching contest in the car.

 

That night, his dreams were decidedly odd. They began innocently enough with work dreams, the sort of stuff he always thought of as mental housekeeping. Cases got mixed up with grocery lists and he found himself pursuing a large onion through a nearly empty theater in which Mulder was watching a Three Stooges short and belching happily.

Then suddenly she was there with him, and in his arms, twining herself around him, her mouth on his, her warm, small body pressed so hard against him he could hardly breathe. Gene Autry was singing "I'm Back in the Saddle Again" and the background shot was of the desert at sunset. Technicolor jackalopes bounced crazily all around them.  
He was inside her, she rode him slowly, deeply, her dark curls falling around her face, falling onto his chest as she bent to kiss him.

She raised her head; it was Scully. She fixed him with her hard, searching gaze and he rose up off the bed with a wordless cry of release then fell back, eyes shut tight against her.

"Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk…"

He opened his eyes. Mulder was on top of him. "I told you the chili would work," he said, and Skinner wrapped a hand around Mulder's neck and tried to pull him down for one last kiss.

"Hey, I may fuck on the first date, but I don't kiss," he said crankily and Skinner began to laugh.

He woke himself up laughing and found that he had a serious case of heartburn, but nothing worse. Thanks, Mulder.

Strangely, the dream didn't disturb him as much as he might have imagined it would. The bits about Scully and Mulder…he was philosophical about them. Scully was a remarkably attractive woman; something like this was inevitable. Mulder…Skinner had long ago made peace with himself over some of his occasional lapses. And then, self-discipline was an across-the-boards sort of thing; it didn't have gender limitations.

But the girl - that scared him a little because he'd liked it so much. He'd had no sense of danger, he'd been giving himself completely and without reservation or elementary caution. Perhaps that's why Scully and Mulder had shown up; the mind had funny ways of caring for itself after all.

He grabbed a bottle of Mylanta from the refrigerator and swigged down a couple of mouthfuls. "Ehuch. Thanks, Mulder." He took a quick pee and went back to bed, but sleep wouldn't come. Or at least he didn't notice it when it came. One moment he was staring at the ceiling, and the next at a pair of sunglasses flashing pink and purple lights, attached to the phantom girl who stared down at him.

"Thee'as kind eyes," she said softly.

"What?"

"You have kind eyes." She took off the sunglasses and threw them down onto the bed. "Do you want to kiss me? Take me, then." And she bent into a kiss so sweet of springtime and the soft scent of apples that a shudder ran through his whole body. He enfolded her gently and returned her kisses with a long-banked passion until she broke away, gasping softly. "Thee is my man now," she whispered, and her long fingers flew over lacings and buttons and zippers, and ribbons of bright material, stripping them away from her small frame. His own large hands, clumsy with the fastenings, fell to his sides as he watched her undress. Thank you, Mulder, he thought, finally blessing the Fox Mulder chili and beer cure for hallucinations; it didn't prevent them, but it certainly made them more fun.

She kicked back the covers between them and lowered herself onto him, bare flesh to bare flesh, electric, warm, almost hypnotic. His hands covered her breasts, his mouth her mouth. She twined her arms around his neck and rubbed her face catlike against his. He rolled her onto her back and she lifted her legs up so that he could press deep into her body. He feared to at first; she was so small - not a child, he could see that in her eyes, but small and delicately made. Yet she showed no sign of anything but intense pleasure in the act from start to finish.

He had so nearly allowed himself to forget the heat and melting wetness of a woman, and in remembering now, he felt a coldness in himself begin to fade. For just a moment he knew real fear. If he thawed now where would this all end?

"No," she murmured. "Be with me now. Be in the here and now." Small, strong fingers caressed his flesh. "Harder," she whispered and moaned into his ear.

"Oh god…" He was lost. He could no more turn from her now, nor deny her wishes than he could fly. He pushed her upwards, then took her by the wrists and braced himself against the bed and rode her, carefully at first, but as she urged him on he became wilder, rougher, riding hard on her willing body until she could no longer speak her wishes. And yet the noises she made beneath him were eloquent enough; she was lost, too.

He thrust deep, her hips rose to meet him and in the same moment he felt his own release and heard hers. She screamed wordlessly over and over as he filled her.

Nothing in life had any business being so fucking perfect.

Spent, he began to climb off of her, but she held him between her long legs, put her arms around him and pulled him into an embrace. He felt her clench her muscles to hold him inside herself. Too exhausted to argue, he simply collapsed onto her and closed his eyes.

"Yessss," she hissed softly. "Oh yes."

He woke, face down in damp and rumpled sheets. The room was growing light and his phantom was gone.

"Nice dream," he groaned and rolled over. His sheets were soaked at groin level and he realized that he must've put a lot of energy into humping the mattress. Well, it was marginally better than total celibacy, especially when accompanied by dreams like the one he'd had the night before.

Climbing out of bed took a lot of energy. He stumbled into the bathroom and flipped on the light. His eyes were darkly ringed as if he'd gotten no sleep at all.

There was a mark on his shoulder. He stared at it. Reached up and touched it. It couldn't be what it looked like - a love bite. He twisted to see it more clearly and that's when he caught sight of the welts; long, red ones. All down his back and buttocks.

"Oh no. Oh no…" he breathed as he turned and twisted to see the marks she'd left on him. It wasn't possible.

He went back to the bed and stared at the stained and sodden sheets. No clues there, nothing to prove or disprove her presence. Skinner cursed softly and began to strip the bed. This was too much.

And then the sunglasses fell out of the bedclothes. They were still flashing.

 

"Okay so you say you found these in your bed?"

"That's what I said, yes."

"But you thought it was a dream."

"I was sure it was. How could it have been real, Mulder?"

The other man smiled. "You thought it was the chili, didn't you?"

"This isn't funny. If she was there last night…" His voice trailed away. Mulder knew what the issues were.

"Anything else? Any other evidence of her presence?" Skinner didn't reply immediately and Mulder jumped at his reticence. "Wet sheets?"

Questions like this were why he'd waited until he knew that Scully was out of the office before he approached Mulder. "That's not compelling evidence on the face of it."

Mulder chuckled ruefully. "Don't I know it. Sorry. What then?"

"Marks."

"What? On your body? She left marks?" He was obviously intrigued by this last twist.

"Yes." Skinner was feeling sullen. "Look, it's not stigmata."

"Will you show them to me?"

"No!"

Mulder just stared at him.

"I wish I'd never mentioned them." Gritting his teeth, Skinner undid his tie and unbuttoned his shirt. He shucked it quickly and pulled his tee shirt up from the back.

"Oh man…" Mulder breathed. "You look like you've been run over by a reaper."

Scully walked in on them just as Mulder was tracing the network of welts with his hands.

"Oh…"

Mulder was the first to react. "Scully, I know what you're thinking, and all I can say is that he hasn't used his position to coerce me into anything."

Skinner was horrified. "Agent Mulder!" He could feel himself flushing down to his nipples. He pulled his shirt back down and tucked it in.

Scully's expression never changed. "That's fine. Call me when you're finished," she said and left the office.

"I never have been able to rattle her," Fox mused. "She's good."

"This is a nightmare."

"How far down do they go?"

"Mulder, for God's sake!"

"All right. Okay." He sat down and scratched his cheek thoughtfully. "It was one thing when she was hanging around in the rain or making you think the moon was full…"

"Can these marks be explained in any other way?" Skinner asked as he buttoned his shirt.

"Well sure. I mean they could be stigmata; you can't rule that out. But I'm at a loss to explain the glasses unless you've learned to conjure everyday objects out of thin air." He frowned. "You could be doing this yourself and not realizing it."

"You mean like with a multiple personality disorder?"

"Yeah, going out and buying the glasses…" Fox shook his head. "It doesn't really work, does it?. I've seen her, too, which is our fudge factor."

"Any other theories? I'm willing to entertain anything which doesn't make me look like I'm barking mad."

"I think we can pretty much rule out barking mad," the younger man said. "Something about this bothers me."

"I'm so glad to hear I'm not the only one."

Mulder gave his boss a grin of appreciation. "Good delivery," he murmured. "No, what I mean is that there's something I'm missing here, an idea, a precedent." He frowned again. "Something I should know."

Skinner knotted his tie and straightened it. "Why don't you get back to me about this?"

"Certainly. Oh and, sir?"

"Yes?"

"Stay away from chili with onions."

 

Wise advice on more than one count, Skinner decided as he stopped on the way home to buy some more antacid. The chili had been excellent but not good enough to be paying for it the night after. And once his dream had become so threatening, he couldn't think of it with any pleasure. Like Scrooge with his ghosts, he found himself wishing the girl away on an unfortunate meal.

And that wish turned him cold, and lonelier still, so when he arrived home, he didn't even bother switching on the light or looking through the bit of mail that arrived at the house, usually addressed to "Occupant." He didn't like thinking about how little there was to his life.

He was simply not prepared to find her going through his dresser drawers; it left him uncharacteristically speechless. She caught sight of him in the mirror and said, "My love!" and as his eyes followed her line of sight he realized that the only reflection in the mirror was his own.

He felt sick, suddenly; something the Mylanta couldn't cure.

"Jeezus…"

And just as suddenly she seemed to read his distress and her reflection took shape with a teasing little shimmer. She was there, smiling at him. "Hard day?"

"What the hell are you?" he demanded.

She turned and started towards him, but he backed away and felt for his gun, at the same time knowing that it would be of no aid to him. Whatever this thing was, shooting it would be entirely useless. What he read in her eyes at that moment he registered as sadness, but he could have sworn it began as something quite different. She changed too suddenly for him. Far too quickly. "What are you?" he repeated.

"Your woman."

"No."

"Yes. Did last night mean nothing to you?"

For just a moment, he felt in the wrong, then realized that she had made a visceral appeal, and he determined not to get entangled in some emotional argument with a phantom; he'd had too many of them with real women. "You had no reflection, you disappear. What are you?" he repeated slowly and firmly, holding her back from him with a warning hand.

"Ah…" She went back to the dresser and began to replace his clothing, folding it neatly and tucking it back in place. "Magic breeds magic."

"I don't believe in magic."

She shrugged. "I tell you what I know. Currents of magic attach themselves."

"To what?"

"Those around them, within them. Your Mulder and Scully. You. Magic breeds magic, and I am thy child, child of thy magics. And theirs," she added as she closed the drawers softly. "Do you see?"

He shook his head. "I don't believe in it. I don't believe you're really here."

She shrugged again. "I tell thee it's thy choice to believe, but it makes no matter to me. Here I am and here I stay."

Skinner blinked. "What?"

She grinned. "I told you that you are my man now."

"I don't want you here. Please leave."

"You do want me."

"No."

"Oh yes, Walter Skinner. Thee desires me above all other things. Thee made me."

And then before his eyes, she became Scully. "Do you prefer me this way?"

"NO!"

Mulder appeared in her place. "Or so?"

"Stop that! Just stop it now." He was backed up against the wall; there was nowhere to go.

The girl reappeared. "Why do you fear me so? I'm thy will made flesh." And as if to illustrate she morphed herself into the image of the girl he'd left so long ago…before the bureau, before Vietnam…the girl he had loved above everything else, the girl long dead. His phantom, wearing Alicia's face and body, pressed herself up against him and pulled him down into a kiss which made him ache with pain, and longing and with the purest joy.

 

"Did she show up last night?"

It took Skinner a moment before he realized that Mulder was asking him a direct question. "What?"

"I take it you had company last night."

"No evidence of it," he replied cautiously, earning a quizzical look from the agent.

"That isn't exactly what I meant."

"I'm thinking that it's work related, agent Mulder. I've put in a request for some time off." He tapped his pencil against his desk blotter and willed Mulder out of the office.

"It's a good idea." An unspoken "but" hung in the air between them. "Starting when?" he asked finally.

"Tomorrow. So I'm trying to finish up some things today." It was as blunt a dismissal as he felt comfortable giving. Mulder had tried to help, after all. It was just that Skinner knew he had to deal with this himself; it was his past coming back to haunt him.

He found he was almost anxious to get back to the house that evening. Would she be the gypsy girl with dark, lovely eyes, or would she be Alicia? He had gone on too long without her, had lived too long without closure.

The house smelled musty by comparison to the fresh spring night, so he opened a few windows. She'd been through the refrigerator and had left it open. Food lay on the counters, milk was spilled on the floor and tracked around the kitchen. There was a nascent odor of spoilage hanging in the air. Photos of Alicia lay on the kitchen table which meant that his guest had gone through his things quite thoroughly. It also meant that she knew a lot more about him today than she had the day before. He avoided looking too carefully at the photos as he gathered them together.

"That you girl?"

She stood in the doorway, hip canted and pressed against the door frame. Today, of all the utterly unexpected things she could have been, she chose to be the most memorable of a string of nameless Vietnamese prostitutes. Lin something or Li…

"You know who it is," he said quietly, tucking the pictures of Alicia into a drawer.

She laughed. "You don't want to play tonight, do you? You wanted her back."

"No."

"Oh yes you did." She stretched and fluffed straight black hair. "I thought you'd enjoy Liane again. You did enjoy her a long time ago, after Alicia died. She was so good at pain, wasn't she?"

"Why are you here?" he asked, but without heat.

"To take away all the things you can live without," she told him as she found her way back into his arms. "I'm here to help."

Before he could respond, she laid a small finger across his lips to silence his objections, and began to unbutton his shirt. Long, red lacquered fingernails scraped slowly, delicately across his flesh as she peeled away his cotton tee. One nail scratched the surface of his nipple and he gasped. It was not quite pain, but it was far from comfort. He began to remember Liane with mixed emotions.

"Look," he began, and she struck him hard across the face.

"You speak when I tell, so-jer. On knees."

Even on his knees he was nearly as tall as she was, and as it had so many years before, the notion made him laugh.

She struck his face again as she had the first time. "What so funny?"

"You're so small and so strong," he said; a thought he hadn't articulated that first time.

"That right." She smiled. "And my pain take yours away, you see?"

 

What it did, in the end was to drive all conscious thought from his mind; a blessing, really, and afterwards he found himself wondering why Liane hadn't gotten rich. She was more than good at pain, she was its mistress. She could dispense it so gracefully that it felt like largesse, and she craved it so completely that after the initial sense of shock, even the most fastidious soldier seemed to enjoy inflicting it on her.

Older and wiser now, Skinner wasn't inclined to play her game, but when he discovered that unlike Liane, this phantom of his was impossible to hurt - even the bright print of his hand on her dark golden flesh faded in seconds, marks that should have become bruises never even discolored - he found her impossible to resist.

He knew where the anger came from; he'd always known where he was storing it, and how to channel some of it into his work. But what came roaring out of him that night was truly frightening, and utterly exhilarating. She goaded him into rage and obligingly became its object, forming and reforming herself until there were no more enemies to annihilate, no more anger in him. She goaded him into submission until he felt there were no more walls to knock down..

Unfortunately, when he woke he found that unlike his phantom, he was not immune to damage from a night of sexual mayhem. He was cut, bruised, and he felt a thousand years old. But what he found more surprising is that there was no sense of relief, just an emptiness where he had held so much negative energy inside himself for so long. He tried to tell himself it was good to be rid of it all, but without something to replace it, what was he but hollow, now?

He thought about getting up and eating or at least showering, but neither seemed pressing enough for him to seriously consider leaving his bed, and not long after he woke, he fell asleep again.

The second time he woke it was to the sound of Gene Autry, and briefly he wondered if this was another dream or if reality had finally caught up to his unconscious mind. He struggled out of bed and was horrified to see that the sheets were bloodstained. On the way to the bathroom he saw his phantom sitting in the living room going through his photo box. She was listening to one of his cds and tearing up photos. The stink of rotten food from the kitchen was enough to keep him from being hungry. He took a quick shower and then went to the back bedroom and collapsed.

"Tell me your name." It was dark in the room and there was a weight on him, warm and seemingly alive. "C'mon, I can't call you "Lieutenant" forever.

"Corporal Boone, get off of me."

"Oh come on, you love it. You know you do."

He was right, of course. Skinner's hands closed on smooth, muscular shoulders. "Boone…"

"No, tell me your name. I know my own."

"You know it's Walter."

"Is it?" Boone's mouth sucked at his collar bone. "But what's the ess for?"

"Stephen"

"Stephen. Stephen," Boone repeated as if he were trying it out, test driving it.

Skinner's hands dropped back onto the bed. "Do we have to do this?" he whispered.

"You don't want to?" The dark girl was back.

"No."

"Why not?"

"He's long dead; it was an experiment. I don't see the point."

She regarded him curiously. "I thought there'd be more to you than this. I thought you'd enjoy having him back. You'd rather it was someone living?"

"No!" he said, quickly, dreading her choice. It would almost certainly shatter the boundaries of good taste.

"Thee's afraid of thy own mind," she said with a cluck of disapporoval.

"I hurt. I need sleep," he said. "And food."

"Food?"

"It's all rotted, isn't it? All gone. Why did you trash the kitchen?"

"Kitchen's not trashed. Food's not rotten."

He struggled up from underneath her and went out to see for himself. Sure enough, the stench was gone and the kitchen was clean. The refrigerator was full of food all of which looked fresh. He found that his sheets had been changed, too, and the bathroom cleaned until it shone. The only thing that was permanent, apparently, was the pile of photo scraps.

"Why did you do that?"

"You won't need them anymore," she said. "I'll fix you some food."

Skinner bent slowly and retrieved the scraps which he laid out on the table. Boone, his outfit in 'nam, Alicia's family, his own. Not all, but a few of each. And the scraps were oddly washed out as if she'd chosen only overexposed pictures to discard. Only he remembered some of these well enough to know that they'd been good snapshots, not overexposed at all. Certainly they hadn't looked so sucked dry.

She'd fixed him a bloody rare steak and some carrots.   
"Don't you eat?"

She shook her head. "Go on then. You look like you could use it." She poured him a cup of coffee.

He ate mechanically. None of her food had any taste, and it left him still hungry.

 

"Wally?"

It took a lot to drag him out of a sleep so deep and heavy that he felt drugged with it.

"Wally. Honey?"

"Alicia?"

She smiled in the darkness. Moonlight shone on a soft fall of black hair. "I just wanted you to hold me. Go back to sleep now, querido."

He cradled her in his arms and pressed his face against her soft hair. Yes, this was how it should be.

Morning brought a number of new shocks, but Skinner's system was inured to them. Or perhaps it was just complete emotional fatigue. Alicia - an older version of the girl he had known - lay sleeping on his arm, her hair spread across the pillow like a web of gleaming, black silk. A golden band on her left hand was a smaller duplicate of the one on his.  
And the bedroom was vastly different from the one in which he had fallen asleep the night before. This one showed a feminine hand in the pale peach-colored walls and lacy bedclothes. The wall to the right of the bed was hung with framed family photos. He recognized his own family - his own younger self standing stiffly behind stiffly posed parents - Alicia's large family at about the time of her oldest brother's graduation from high school. Alicia had been nine, wearing tight pigtails and a pink, ruffled dress. That was the year they met, the year he fell in love with her. He had been ten.

What unnerved him, though, were the photos of their children. He looked away from them, knowing that they were lies.

"Mmm, honey, I had such a strange dream. I dreamed that you and I were both other people and we couldn't find each other. Isn't that awful?" Alicia rolled over onto him. "I cried and cried, Wally, but you didn't know me."

He felt tears close to the surface and took a deep breath. "It was just a nightmare," he said gently.

Their oldest daughter, Jilly, looked down on them from her frame. Vividly dark and beautiful, like her mother, she had his serious eyes. This was the child who had cost Alicia her life.

"Honey?"

"Hmm?"

"We really should do something with your day off."

He waited. For the space of a dozen heartbeats, for twice that, he hung suspended, undecided. Then he smiled down at his wife.

"I've missed you so much, Alicia."

"Missed me?"

"While I was asleep. I've been asleep for a long time."

She touched his face. "You're gonna make me cry," she warned.

"Oh no, no." He hugged her close and buried his face in her hair again. "Querida mia, no. I'm so happy to be here with you."

"Wally, I've been trying and trying to think…"

Something not quite right. What was it?

"What was that name I used to call you when we were kids?"

She didn't smell like Alicia, she smelled of apples.

"Remember? It was our secret."

"I remember," he told her.

Alicia had smelled like sunshine and spice; even all these years later he could still remember that much of her. This was not Alicia.

"But the name, what was the name?"

"You don't remember?"

"That's why I'm asking you, silly."

Did it matter so much?

"You gave me that name the day we met, Allie."

Dear God, did it matter?

"I know all that, but what was the name?"

"Don't you remember why you gave it to me?"

"I remember we gave each other names. I don't remember either one, isn't that silly? Honey, what were they?"

Why did it matter so much?

"Esteban. You called me Esteban because you said it sounded more like a hero."

In a moment she was on top of him.

"Yes, yes, I remember," she hissed. "Thy name. Thy true name. Thee's my man now."

So. It was done that easily. She pressed her mouth to his and began to suck the life from him like the old wives tales of cats sucking the breath from babies. He tried to throw her off, but she had too much of him. She knew his true name, his soul name.

"I am thy child," she hissed at him, raking her nails down his bare flesh, laying it open so that blood welled in the cuts. She sucked at them. "I was made to bring thee to hell, maricon."

He was too weak to throw her off, too weak to even ask why.

"Your puta is in hell waiting for thee," the thing told him and her fingernails began to press down into the flesh of his breast. "And I shall take thy heart to my maker. Give me her soul name and I shall let thee die easily."

He barely had the strength left to speak. "No, you've had enough of us. Nunca lo diré."

She snarled and he felt her nails digging into his flesh.

"Give me the name and I swear I will not hurt thee again! ¿Cómo se llama ella?"

Indistinctly he heard the sound of a door opening. A moment later she pulled free of him and turned, and he followed her gaze to the doorway where Mulder stood. She hissed at Mulder. She had taken Scully's shape, and she told him to leave them in peace.

"You're not Scully." Mulder said and she rewarded him with a hideous smile.

"Tell me thy true name," she whispered to him, "and I shall leave this poor thing for thy bed."

Mulder shook his head. "Thanks, but I don't think so."

She began her transformations and Skinner watched her, as if from a huge distance, as she tried to seduce Mulder with his own mind. Then, realizing that this, of all things, should have been private, he squeezed his eyes shut. He did not want to know Mulder's secrets, not even if he was about to take them to his grave.

And for this reason he never knew exactly what it was Mulder did in those long, unhappy moments just before the phantom on Skinner's chest shrieked horribly and began to writhe in pain.

Skinner's eyes flew open. The thing on top of him was morphing at a fantastic rate, creating apparitions of people Skinner had never known, things he hoped never to see again. She began to shimmer, to melt, and in a few moments, she was gone, and he found himself covered with pale green goo.

"Eauh, what's that?" he said, staring down the length of his body.

"I don't really know but I'd wash it off if I were you," Mulder told him.

 

"What did you do?" Skinner asked after he had showered.

"Seawater and a handful of salt for good measure. It was that or cold iron. Are you all right?"

"Weak," Skinner admitted. "But still alive. Your timing is pretty good, Mulder."

"I was getting worried; you hadn't answered your phone in a week."

"It never rang. A week?"

Mulder nodded. "How long did it seem?"

"Two, three days." It was harder and harder to remember what had passed in those days; he couldn't seem to get hold of time properly. "I think."

"I came by because I suddenly realized what she was. It was in front of me the whole time and I couldn't see it," he said, a note of impatience in his voice. "When you said that this was a nightmare I should have begun to see it, but I didn't. The idea of a succubus eluded me."

Succubus. That would explain the weakness. "You knew right away it wasn't Scully."

"She was right behind me."

Skinner stared into the mirror and winced. He looked like hell and now he was certain that Scully knew his sordid little secrets. "Where is she now?"

"Getting us some food. Your cupboard is bare. Completely. Not even a sugar cube. What happened?

"She let it all rot."

"So what have you been eating?"

"I don't even like to think. Oh god, I hope Scully gets some coffee."

"She will."

"I suppose it's pointless to be embarrassed," Skinner mused. He was beginning to loose the hollow, unattached feeling he'd had since just before Mulder had rescued him; it was being replaced by chagrin and, beneath it all, sadness. At least the worst of the weakness had passed off as soon as the thing had vanished.

"I think that thing couldn't do much but embarrass us," Mulder replied. The things she became just before I threw the saltwater on her…"

"I'm afraid I didn't see any of them. Did she hit a few sore spots?" It was the best way he knew to thank Mulder.

"Quite a few. You didn't see any?"

"No."

Mulder seemed relieved. "Scully didn't either," he told his boss.

Skinner decided he needed to sit down before he fell down.

Scully arrived loaded down with groceries and sent Mulder out to empty the car. "You can pay me next week," she said, before Skinner could thank her. She began to fill his refrigerator, then stopped, turned and said, "Are you all right, Sir?"

He nodded. "Yes, thank you."

"Good. I think we'll let Mulder make his famous spaghetti ala everything-that-doesn't-move. Sound good?"

"Could you just break off a hunk of bread for me, Scully?" He hated to sound so pathetic, but the room was starting to spin and he needed a little substance rather badly.

"I'm sorry, I didn't think." She poured him a glass of juice. His hands were shaking so badly that he couldn't lift it without spilling it on himself. Scully just handed him a napkin and sat down to butter him a slice or two of bread.

"Do you want to talk about it?" she asked after he'd finished his snack and while Mulder was happily chopping vegetables.

"No," he said, without hesitation. They deserved more; they'd saved his life, maybe even his soul, but he couldn't give it just then.

"Okay," Scully replied. "No problem." She began to make some small talk about work, bending the conversation into comfortable patterns.

But despite her efforts, Skinner found it impossible to relax. He kept thinking of the thing that had taken Alicia's shape, and of the phantom future it had shown him. And it had shown him one other thing, too: Even after all these years, he didn't know the reason for Alicia's death. He knew the facts, of course - both the false ones and the truth, but not the reasons why, when dying was the last thing she would have wanted, why, when she could have demanded anything of him, why, when their future seemed so certain, she had allowed herself to be butchered without ever having asked him for help or even told him her intentions.

And then he understood that the…succubus or whatever it was, was only the first volley in someone's war to annihiliate him.

"Sir, are you all right?" Scully asked.

Skinner looked down at the plate of spaghetti steaming in front of him and wondered how long he'd been sitting there, wrapped in thought. Then he looked up to meet Scully's eyes. "It's not over," he whispered.

Scully looked at her partner. Mulder picked up a fork and began to eat and Skinner followed suit.

"Not over?"

"Eat your dinner, Scully. I slaved over a hot stove for you." But Mulder's tone was missing its usual lightness.

He was not going to drag them into this.

"This is great. Scully, eat your supper. That's an order."

He didn't miss the look they gave each other. He wasn't going to think about it.

**Author's Note:**

> The story is finished, the plotline is not. It was getting too long, and some people were getting too impatient for me to continue. I honestly doubt I'll ever finish now.
> 
> I wrote this before the show where Skinner has to deal with a succubus. Great minds, I guess. Just wanted to establish that though I love the show, this is not some effort to either copy or better one of the scripts.


End file.
